


better fold or pass (tonight i'm out for blood)

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Father-Daughter Relationship, Murder, Vampire!Cassandra, darkfic but with happy girlfriends at the end, if you love scanlan and think he can do no wrong maybe don't read, you get to choose which of your blood family you want to keep too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 07:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9647150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: (tell me, girl with the somber voice, / who dressed you in grey clothes / and left you alone at the mercy of shadows?): The first time Kaylie dreams of killing her father, she is seven years old. She is seven and she has never held anything more deadly than a kitchen knife, but still she dreams of him at her feet, a thousand little cuts criss-crossing the face that she hopes she doesn't share.Or; the one where Kaylie makes a different choice about familySpoilers for episodes 83-85, like,a lotof spoilers





	

**Author's Note:**

> you owe shithead parents nothing and i am very distressed for poor kaylie pls free her
> 
> title from xandria, 'queen of hearts reborn', summary quote (translated) from marcela bovio, 'alicia'

The first time Kaylie dreams of killing her father, she is seven years old. She is seven and she has never held anything more deadly than a kitchen knife, but still she dreams of him at her feet, a thousand little cuts criss-crossing the face that she hopes she doesn't share.

The dreams change over the years, evolving as she learns more about him, about herself. Some nights she uses her sword, runs him straight through the chest before he can say a word. Some nights she play for him, Charms him straight into an orc camp or a river or off a cliff, ending his life with a song just like he ended her mother's with his. Some nights, the best nights (the worst nights?) it's just him and her and a very small knife, and she leaves her bloody handprints across his corpse.

The dreams carry her forward, shift as she visits town after town always a little behind him but always finding more and more stories to fuel her hatred. Sometimes there are nicer stories, people and towns that her father and his latest crowd of adventurers have saved, but more often there are women with empty eyes that Sybil stares back from.

It doesn't matter. Kaylie can wait.

Kaylie has the entire world, if she wants.

 

**

 

The first time Kaylie tries to kill her father, she is twenty years old. She is twenty and she has a sword and a flute and she has already taken his gold and his pride and —

— and curiosity gets the better of her.

She sheathes her sword and the blade against leather sounds nothing like what she imagines the blade across his throat would sound like. Maybe it's for the best, she thinks. Vox Machina seem like just the sort to get all stuck-up over a little blood on their carpets.

Kaylie wipes tears of frustration from her eyes and lets Scanlan believe she's crying for him. It's fine. It's _fine._  There is, after all, more than one way to die.

 

**

 

The first time Scanlan dies, Kaylie doesn't know about it. The second time, the irritatingly watchful half-elf he managed to con into befriending him asks her to help bring him back, going on about family and forgiveness as if she has the right to try to change Kaylie's mind.

Kaylie goes anyway, more for the satisfaction of seeing his body than anything else. If the only reason she doesn't chuck her tankard at the half-elf's head before leaving is that there's still drinkable ale in it, well, that's her own business.

She doesn't expect the anger that rises in her when she sees his body. Not so much at his broken promise — that, she had expected. But seeing him dead, knowing someone else got to him first ... that _burns._

"Fine," she tells his assembled friends, all of whom look far more upset than she thinks is warranted. "Fine, I'll help. But I'm getting a drink first."

 

**

 

She throws herself down on a bar stool in the first tavern she finds, next to a girl with long brown and white hair peeking out from under a hooded cloak that seems excessive for the early spring day who is the only other patron.

"Ale," Kaylie says shortly. "And whatever the lady is having." It's a reflex, ordering for a pretty girl, and Kaylie doesn't feel like drinking alone just yet.

She tenses, at that, but when the barkeep's back is turned she looks up at Kaylie with eyes that are lightning-sharp. "So my brother did bring you back," she says, and, yes, Kaylie sees the resemblance now. "Are you staying long? He has a habit of dumping strays on my doorstep before wandering off again, though few of them are as attractive as you."

Kaylie gives about twenty seconds' worth of consideration to how much trouble she could get into bedding Whitestone's ruler before she grins and says, "Well, that depends on the sort of welcome you'll give me, won't it?"

Cassandra leans forward. "Stick around and you'll see." When she smiles against Kaylie's neck, teeth too pointed to be human graze her skin and Kaylie shivers.

Oh. _Oh._

 

**

 

Vox Machina covers Scanlan in pudding and leaves him tied to his bed. Maybe she underestimated those fuckers.

The servants are happy enough to leave her alone with him, and she pulls her dagger and traces lines across his skin. Not hard enough to mark, not while she's still considering her options, but hard enough to give some measure of satisfaction while she thinks.

Cassandra could eat him, of course, though that would be hard to explain to the others. She could let him go off with his friends and get killed again, but that still seems too impersonal. Well, there's still plenty of time to decide.

Kaylie slips down to the kitchen to liberate a bottle of wine before making her way to Cassandra's room.

Cassandra raises an eyebrow when she opens the door and sees it. "Seducing me with my own wine cellar?"

"Something tells me you're not the type to be seduced," Kaylie smirks. "But I don't have to share if you don't want."

" _Oh_  no," Cassandra says, tugging her inside and locking the door behind them. "You're sharing. Sharing much more than the wine, dear."

Kaylie shrugs. "Fine by me."

Cassandra's skin is cold as she leads Kaylie to the bed, and the wine that clings to her lips tastes of blood when Kaylie kisses her.

"I'm keeping your secret," she says, half-breathless as Cassandra nips her way down her chest to the laces of her shirt, careful not to draw blood yet. "And in return?"

Cassandra's hand slips into her breeches, past her underthings, and Kaylie's whole body jerks at the icy press of Cassandra's fingers against the heat of her cunt. "So _many_  things, dear," she says, and words are lost to Kaylie.

 

**

 

She leaves with Scanlan the next day with a plan in mind. They don't get far from Whitestone, which is fortunate, and they camp that night under a crimson Hunter's Moon. Scanlan hums and prods at the rabbit turning slowly over the fire, while Kaylie watches the moon and thinks about what Cassandra would look like naked in this light.

"So," she says. "Learning how to be a Shorthalt, huh?"

"Yeah," he says, and she can't tell if he's being serious. "I'd like it if we could figure it out together. Just the two of us, it's all we need."

Kaylie thinks about her mother and shifts her grip on her sword. "I don't know," she says contemplatively. "I think I've already learned a lot about it from you."

He grins up at her, that horrid shit-eating grin that she's trained out of her mouth ever since she first saw it. "That's my daughter," he says warmly. "There's some things that'll never come out of that blood of yours."

"Really?" she asks, and he doesn't quite pick up the shift in her tone. "What things, _father_? Carelessness? Betrayal? Gaslighting?" She draws her sword as he tries to scramble to his feet. "I'm not a Shorthalt," she hisses. "And your apology was _never_  accepted."

His skin splits as beautifully under her sword as her own skin split under Cassandra's teeth just last night. Kaylie watches blood pour from his throat, his wrists, his stomach, and smiles.

 

**

 

Cassandra is standing on the battlements when Kaylie returns, every inch the lady even though all she's wearing is a nightgown and a robe. "You come back more often than my brother does, these days," she says, and Kaylie bites back a curse. She doesn't have quite her lady's stealth, but she knows a thing or two about the shadows, and had hoped to surprise her.

"You give me a compelling reason," she says instead, and reaches up to press a hand to Cassandra's chest. There'll be blood on her gown, but Kaylie's always been fond of that look. A warrior's look, the look of one you can trust. She offers her other hand, blood on her nails. "Come down here?"

Cassandra kneels, grip loose around Kaylie's wrist, and Kaylie shivers as Cassandra sucks on her fingertips, whines when she's released.

"You have a different kind of blood family here now," she says, and in the moonlight she looks more inhuman than ever. "If you would accept it."

"I would," Kaylie says, and when she seals the promise with a kiss she thinks it is the first time in a very long while that _family_  has sounded like anything other than a curse.


End file.
